DZone
Java Zone
Thanks for visiting DZone today,
Edit Profile
  • Manage Email Subscriptions
  • How to Post to DZone
  • Article Submission Guidelines
Sign Out View Profile
  • Post an Article
  • Manage My Drafts
Over 2 million developers have joined DZone.
Log In / Join
  • Refcardz
  • Trend Reports
  • Webinars
  • Zones
  • |
    • Agile
    • AI
    • Big Data
    • Cloud
    • Database
    • DevOps
    • Integration
    • IoT
    • Java
    • Microservices
    • Open Source
    • Performance
    • Security
    • Web Dev
DZone > Java Zone > Controlling Distributed Presentations

Controlling Distributed Presentations

Steve Chaloner user avatar by
Steve Chaloner
·
Jun. 19, 12 · Java Zone · Interview
Like (0)
Save
Tweet
2.11K Views

Join the DZone community and get the full member experience.

Join For Free

In a previous post, I talked about how a projector failure at the 010DEV event resulted in the presentation using laptops, smartphones and tablets to display the slides. One of the problems here, as noted by speaker Trisha Gee, is that on every device the next slide must be manually selected.

A couple of weeks ago, I came up with the idea of FilthyHackFriday – the idea being that you take a problem, and code up a quick’n'dirty solution in 30 minutes as a proof of concept. For my first FHF project, I chose to address this problem and wrote DistPres. It lets you upload Powerpoint or PDF presentations and converts each slide to an image. When you view a presentation, AJAX polling checks for changes to the current slide index and updates the view accordingly. You can control the presentation using the left and right arrow keys, and reset it to the first slide using the R key.

The use-case for this as follows. You’re in an upstairs room in a bar, trying to give a presentation but the projector doesn’t want to join in. So, you fire up DistPres and upload your presentation. Everyone points their device to your web server, and selects the correct presentation. From that point on, every time you change a slide everyone else will get the new slide automatically within a second.

Notes:
- It’s quick and dirty, but it works.
- With some cleaning up it could actually be pretty handy.
- It’s written using Play 2
- Originally I wrote it using WebSockets, but that automatically excludes certain browers and devices. AJAX polling opens the field a bit more.

You can find the code on GitHub here, or download it directly from here.

Use case Upload IT Polling (computer science) AJAX Concept (generic programming) Joins (concurrency library) GitHub

Published at DZone with permission of Steve Chaloner, DZone MVB. See the original article here.

Opinions expressed by DZone contributors are their own.

Popular on DZone

  • Toying With Kotlin’s Context Receivers
  • A Guide to Events in Vue
  • Data Visualization of Healthcare Expenses by Country Using Web Scraping in Python
  • Instancio: Random Test Data Generator for Java (Part 1)

Comments

Java Partner Resources

X

ABOUT US

  • About DZone
  • Send feedback
  • Careers
  • Sitemap

ADVERTISE

  • Advertise with DZone

CONTRIBUTE ON DZONE

  • Article Submission Guidelines
  • MVB Program
  • Become a Contributor
  • Visit the Writers' Zone

LEGAL

  • Terms of Service
  • Privacy Policy

CONTACT US

  • 600 Park Offices Drive
  • Suite 300
  • Durham, NC 27709
  • support@dzone.com
  • +1 (919) 678-0300

Let's be friends:

DZone.com is powered by 

AnswerHub logo